It’ll be all over the interwebs today, but I just want to make a simple statement: it is beyond insulting that the White House would claim they “can’t find” some of the emails that Congress wants to see. That is ridiculous. First off, emails are forever- you can do your own homework if you don’t know this, but emails and the nature of the net combine to form a, ahem, paper trail that just isn’t that hard for computer experts to follow. Secondly, hello, NSA, CIA, DoD and FBI domestic spying, anyone? They probably have a copy of every email every progressive activist has ever sent stored in triplicate on government servers, and they want us to believe they can’t find their own? Give me a break.  Read more 

I don’t really give a crap about the ambassador to Belgium. They are a gracious and intelligent people, and will endure 19 months of this twit with their accustomed aplomb, and excellent chocolates. Bush expending a recess appointment to push through the poop-chute a man whose only qualification is financing the smearing of a man who faithfully served his country in wartime serves only to remind everybody of what Bush didn’t do.

Good job there, Little Snot-Nose!  Read more 

Ruh-roh, Shaggy. Looks like the IG has received that phone call. I can smell the OSP ballsweat stench from here:

A long awaited Pentagon Inspector General’s report into the Office of Special Plans and its activities surrounding pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war has been completed, RAW STORY has learned.

According to sources close to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the classified version of the Pentagon IG’s report will be released to committee members Friday. Two to three declassified pages may also be concurrently released to the public.

A Senate aide on the committee, while not commenting on particular questions regarding the IG’s report, confirmed that a major focal point involves former Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Policy, Douglas Feith – a keystone of the Administration’s intelligence on Iraq and Director of the notoriously secretive Pentagon Office of Special Plans from September 2002 to June 2003.  Read more 

I’m watching the hearings on SeeSpam, and it seems one Republican tactic is to say that managing the reconstruction and keeping track of all that money was “too hard,” and that we shouldn’t be mean to Bremer, because it was a job that was just really, really tough and he’s a nice guy and will you just stop picking on him already, he’s going to cry!

I don’t think much of this will make the TeeVee news, but there are plenty of choice quotes that Democrats seem happy to throw in various Republican faces at this point. If you enjoy this sort of squirming, take a gander. The look on Bremer’s face is priceless. I’m just sorry Rummy isn’t up there with him.  Read more 

Let’s all share a happy moment:

“I’m going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything. The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose.”

— Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), quoted by the AP, on what he’ll choose to investigate as the incoming chairman of the panel.

Excuse me while I go and am giddy for a while.

Oversight? What’s that?

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: November 3, 2006
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.
Mr. Bowen’s office has inspected and audited taxpayer-financed projects like this prison in Nasiriya, Iraq.
And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.  Read more 

Remember the kid games “Simon Says” and “Mother May I”? These are essentially slow-motion races but the catch in both is that forward progress—which is always in the form of some ludicrous maneuver like “scissor steps” or “baby steps” or “giant steps” or skipping or hopping on one foot or the like— can only be made when a particular rule is obeyed. If the director says “Take four giant steps forward” and you do it….BZZZT! You are busted and must go back, because the director didn’t say “Simon says take four giant steps.”

This is what our government has been reduced to. A giant fucking game of Simon, or in this case Bush Says. Doesn’t matter what the actual action is, be it “take three baby steps toward revoking the Rule of Law” or “jump on one foot off the edge of this cliff into complete one-man rule.” Bush can do any goddamn thing he wants and all the majesty of Congress, described in Article One of the Constitution of the United States because Congress is the governing body of our Republic, can do in their righeous rage at being stomped into the dirt by the Unitary Executive is to whine “But he didn’t ASK us first!” Feh.  Read more